The present invention relates to a base which increases the stability of a vertical stack of electronic assemblies, and more particularly to a stability base which provides single switch ON/OFF control of the AC power to the vertical stack of electronic assemblies.
Often, an electrical or electronic system consists of one main assembly and one or more secondary assemblies. A typical personal computer, for example, has a main assembly which has a power supply, a central-processor-unit circuit board, a memory circuit board, a video display monitor interface board, a printer interface board, a keyboard interface and one or more disk drives within its enclosure. A keyboard, a video display monitor, and a printer are a few of the secondary assemblies which may be connected to the main assembly. A typical multi-user system, as another example, has a main assembly which has a power supply, one or more central processor circuit boards, one or more memory circuit boards, one or more interface boards for video display terminals, one or more printer interface boards and one or more disk drives within its enclosure. In both the personal computer system and the multi-user system there is limited space for additional disk drives and/or tape drives in the main assembly, thus there is a need for additional assemblies for additional disk drives, tape drives, and so forth.
Tape drives and write-once-read-many (WORM) optical disk drives are used for archival and backup purposes primarily to prevent loss of critical information in case of a hard disk failure, a hardware/software failure, or a system disaster. Since the tape cassettes and the WORM disks used are operator removable, these drives are best located at desk top level to facilitate ease of operation.
Hard drives, even though most hard disk drives do not have operator removable media, do have activity indicators which show when the drive is READING or WRITING data, and power switches by which the drives may be turned on/off. Because of these features, hard drives should also be located at desk top level for ease of operation.
Thus, it is desirable to have various types of drives available on the desk top for the operator. It can be appreciated, however, that desk top space may become more and more cluttered to the detriment of anyone who works at the desk. Stacking drives one on top of another conserves desk top space, but as each additional drive is added to a stack, the center of gravity for the stack is elevated. Elevating the center of gravity of a stack of assemblies without increasing the size of its support base decreases the stability of the stack, i.e. it makes the stack of assemblies more prone to falling over when tilted. Further, as the stack of assemblies reaches three or four assemblies high, it becomes increasingly difficult for the operator to easily reach and turn each drive off.
Besides the physical task of reaching up to and turning OFF each assembly, the mental task of remembering to turn OFF each assembly which is ON becomes harder as the number of assemblies increases. Also, the likelihood of overlooking an assembly that is ON while turning the remaining assemblies OFF increases as the number of assemblies increases.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a base upon which various drives may be stacked in order to reduce the amount of area occupied by the various drives on an operator's desk.
It is another object of this invention to provide a base that simplifies the power ON and power OFF operations of the stack of assemblies mounted thereon.
It is another object of this invention to provide increased vertical stability to a stack of assemblies by adding a stabilizing base to the bottom thereof.